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Friday, November 27, 2009

I finished up the End of May hat on Monday night. This project was so much fun and I'm officially addicted to stranded knitting. I've got lots of yarn left over, so I will be making the matching mittens to go along with the hat.

Size: Large (next time I will do the smaller size and use size 3 needles)

Notes: I guess I had some gauge issues with this hat, because it turned out atad too big for my head (width and lengthwise). I remedied thesituation by tossing it in the dryer for 10 minutes. The hat fits muchbetter now and doesn't cover my eyes when I pull it down all the way.

I've been trolling Ravelry for fun colorwork patterns now that I can officially add colorwork as one of my knitting skills. I discovered SpillyJane Knits through a Ravelry ad last year and now I'm ready to take the plunge to make up some of her cute mitten patterns. My favorites are the Swedish Fish Mittens and the Carrots and Beets Mittens.

Before I stock up on fingering weight yarn and tiny needles, I plan to make the Chevron Love Mittens with this Farmer's Market Kit that I bought last winter. It hurts me a little to wind up these cute little hanks of yarn into balls, but I've got to bite the bullet, right?

I also finished this scarf made out of the handspun that I bought last Saturday. I based it loosely on the Noro Striped Scarf pattern.

Pattern: Cast on 17 stitches. K1p1 alternating between 2 rows of natural yarn and 2 rows of handspun yarn, slipping the first stitch of each row.

Size: 5 inches by 84 inches

Notes: The Sedona yarn was really great to work with. It's a nubby thick worsted and really soft. I'd definitely use it again. Now, I think I'm a little hooked on handspun yarn. I will be desperately trying to keep myself from picking up another hobby. Wish me luck!

Thursday, November 26, 2009

We're leaving soon to head to my grandparents' house for Thanksgiving dinner. The butternut squash and sourdough stuffing are baking away as I type.

I love Thanksgiving dinner and I love stuffing...I would eat it every day if I could. Here's my all time favorite stuffing recipe:

Sourdough Stuffing

Ingredients

1-pound loaf sourdough bread

8 tablespoons non-dairy butter(I use Earth Balance)

10 ounces cremini mushrooms,sliced 1/2-inch thick in both directions

Salt and freshly ground pepper

4 stalks celery, halvedlengthwise and sliced

1 medium onion, chopped

10 sprigs fresh thyme, leavesstripped from the stems

12 fresh sage leaves, chopped

3 1/2 cups vegetable broth

3 tablespoons chopped Italianparsley leaves

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degreesF. Grease a 2-quart baking dish and set aside.

Cut or tear the bread into1-inch cubes and spread it evenly on 2 baking sheets. Toast the bread in theoven until completely dry and beginning to crisp and brown, about 20 minutes.Transfer to a large mixing bowl.

Melt 2 tablespoons of the butterin a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the mushrooms and a few pinchesof salt and saute, stirring occasionally, until golden brown, about 6 to 8minutes. Add celery, onion, 2 tablespoons butter, and thyme. Once the butterhas melted, cook, stirring frequently, until the vegetables have softened,about 5 minutes. Add sage and remaining 4 tablespoons butter. Add vegetablebroth to skillet and stir to combine. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.

Transfertoasted bread cubes to a large bowl. Pour the vegetable broth mixture over thebread cubes and toss to combine until the bread cubes absorb the liquid. Pourthe mixture into the greased baking dish, and sprinkle with parsley. Bake inthe center of the oven until heated through and the top is golden brown, about40 minutes. Remove the stuffing from the oven and allow to cool about 15minutes before serving.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

I put together a blurb photo book of our Europe trip and finally received the finished product.

I ordered the book from blurb and used their design it yourself templates for Adobe InDesign. This isthe program that I use at work all the time, so I am comfortable withthe software and the templates were very easy to use. The album I made is a 12"x12" hardcover book. I set up eachpage with a 3x3 grid of 4-inch blocks and then added and resized mypictures to fill the blocks. Some photos fill one block and others fillup to 6 blocks of the page. It was a little overwhelming to fit all ofthe pictures in the book, so coming up with a simple grid to use madethe book easy and quick to put together.

I stuck with one color bar for each city that we visited and addedsome of the text from my blog entries and some of my own additionalcommentary. Friends and family are having fun playing "spot the typo."Luckily only two have been found so far!

Blurb was great to work with. I used Blurb for my parents'anniversary album earlier this summer. For the Europe book, I used the cover wrap option which turned out nicely. For my parents' album, I used the dust jacket option, which turned out nice too. Here's two tips that Idiscovered myself through purchasing two books and through readingBlurb forums.

1. Don't pay to upgrade from Standard to Premium paper - it's not much of a quality jump to justify the cost.

2. Don't pay $15 extra to remove the blurblogo from the last page (custom logo option). I was able to tear out the final logo pagemyself for free (blank white page with a tiny logo at the bottomcenter).

For past trips, I have just put photos into 2-up or 3-up albumsand written captions and information. The scrapbooks and photo albumsare starting to take over our house, so getting a photo book like thisprinted is a great space saver for the amount of pictures that it caninclude. It fits easily on our bookshelf and is only about 1/2" wide.

A coworker of mine has had great success using Walgreens for photobooks, too. She came up with the best idea for creating a yearly album.She started a new book on January 1 and adds pictures to her onlinealbum layout throughout the year when she has a chance (once or twice amonth). At the end of December, she'll have a complete album with allof the pictures she's taken this year included in it and won't have toscramble around to remember what she did or where she misplaced photosof a certain event. I think I'm going to try this method out for 2010.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

I've been doing lots of knitting lately. It's a great break fromstudying and is a lot less of a mess than sewing or quilting, so Idon't have to worry about cleaning up after myself when I pull out theneedles.

As with all of my sweater projects, I tend to get sick of them abouthalfway through and want to cast on anything but another sweater, so myAmelia is waiting in the wings right now until inspiration strikesagain. I still hope to finish it by the end of the year, but I have toget a couple small projects finished up before I start on it again.

My first break from Amelia was for this Red Scarf Project Scarf. I've been in a bit of a purple rut lately, so it was so refreshing to use yarn that is not purple for a bit. The yarn I used for this project is called Shepherd's Wool and it's from Stonehedge Fiber Mill near Traverse City, Michigan. This yarn is Michigan's best kept secret. It's similar to Cascade 220 because it is a solid worsted weight yarn that comes in lots of colors. But, it's 250 yards/skein, is a lot softer than Cascade 220 and is thicker and woollier than Cascade. It's great for felting and it's super soft to wear on your skin.

I pulled out my old bamboo needles for this project. They are my first pair of needles and the pair that I learned to knit with and it was fun to use them again. I mainly use my interchangeable circulars for all projects now, but wanted to use these for nostalgia's sake.

I was sort of in denial for a while about how this sweater would look on me and then I saw something online about how women with larger chests should not wear sleeveless turtlenecks and it kind of sealed the deal for me. I'll be ripping this one out and starting on a different project. I've got six skeins of this yarn to work with, so I think I'll use most of it to make Wrenna from French Girl Knits. It's a short sleeved cardigan and I think it will work much better with my body type.

My weekend project has been working on the End of May Hat, this beautiful colorwork pattern from Zig Zag Stitch. I am slowly getting the hang of knitting in both hands and it's been fun to see the pattern progress as I go. I think the yarn that I chose for the project is a bit too close in value, so the colors won't pop individually, but I'll save my final judgment for when the hat is finished.

In the words of my sister, "I really like how it smells. It's sort of gross, like sawdust or something, but it smells good to me." I agree. Ahh...the smell of wool! I'm going to pair this yarn with a cream yarn and make a striped scarf similar to the Noro striped scarf. I'm so excited to work with handspun for the first time!

I don't know if you're like me, but I have a great library of craft idea books that don't get used very often. Is anyone up for a "make-a-project-out-of-an-ignored-but-beautiful-idea-book" challenge? Off the top of my head, I've got a few great books in my stash with projects I'd like to make but have never gotten around to it. The project can be big or small, from a book or magazine, and made for you or as a gift. If you'd like to join, post in the comments and maybe we can report back in a bit with our progress.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Here's two knitting projects I finished recently. I've had a busy semester so far and it's been hard to get any crafting done other than knitting lately. These two garter stitch projects were the perfect projects to give my mind a break.

Notes: This was such a fun pattern to knit. The construction of the hat is genius! I hope to make many more projects from the book soon. It's a soft, thick, and warm hat and a great variation on the typical knit hat.

Notes: This project would have been so much more successful if I had a micro scale and weighed the yarn before I started! The basic pattern of the scarf is to cast on 4 stitches increase every four rows until you've used up half your yarn and then decrease every four rows until 4 stitches remain. I knit more than half of the yarn before I started to decrease, so I ended up with less yarn at the end.

When it started to look like I was going to run out of yarn, I started decreasing one stitch every row until the end. I think that I was able to decrease to about 15 stitches remaining. Then, I ripped (cut) out the cast on row and ripped the beginning of the scarf back until I reached 15 stitches and bound off the original cast on side. The ends of the scarf are no longer pointy, but they are the same width. They kind of curl up in a point when I wear it, so I'm going with it.

The scarf is nice and warm and perfect for the cooler weather and I absolutely love the color of the yarn, so this project is still a great scarf for me to use. Next time, I'll make sure to weigh the yarn first!

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Chris, one of my former coworkers, just started a new blog and online store. I miss hearing about all of her painting, home decorating projects, baking and crafting adventures every day. Work just hasn't been the same without her!

Rumor has it that she's quite talented in the Christmas tree decorating department, so I'm looking forward to her posts in December (hint, hint, Chris!).

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

It seems like my big craftwind last week has died down. I managed totweak out these two projects before life got the better of me.

Firstup is a few cat pillows for around the house. I found this microfleeceblanket for $5 and was able to make 3 pillows out of it (with lots ofleftover fabric) for the cats so I was glad to find such an inexpensivepiece of fabric to use. The pillows are your basic rectangle stuffedloosely with fiberfill. The cats like to sleep on the floor in front ofour heating vents, so I made two for in front of the vents and one for the couch. (Mental note: buying a dark couch is not such a good idea when you have light colored cats...we are constantly vacuuming fur off the grey surface). As soon as I finished the first pillow and set iton the floor, NukuNuku jumped off my lap and splayed herself across thepillow. It's always nice when someone appreciates my work! Even thoughwe have three pillows, they always seem to be fighting over the use ofwhichever pillow the other cat is using.

I also finished my green quilt top. This was modeled after my otherbaby quilts (here and here) and the blocks in this quilt are 5" square instead of 2.5"square. I used 10 fat quarters from the Timeless Treasures AppleCollection and 3.5 yards of fabric for the top. I was able to cut 12five inch squares out of each fat quarter, for a total of 120 squaresthat were then cut in half. I cut the green fabric into 5" wide stripsand cut out 120 squares from each strip and used the remaining fabricfor a border.

The quilt is 14 blocks wide and 16 blocks tall with a 5" border of sashing around the edge. From my estimates, the quilt is approximately 72x81. I'm not sure how I'm going to quilt this yet. I was thinking about doing some straight line stitching a quarter inch in from each seam to make concentric squares, but I might just stick with basic stippling. Any ideas?

I was planning on giving this away as a gift (I don't think the person reads my blog), but after I told Jon myintentions, he became very protective of it. Hopefully he'll let mepart with it!

About Me

Rebekah began quilting in 2006 after being inspired by the book Modern Quilt Workshop by Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr. She loves shopping for fabric and combining interesting prints and colors in her quilts. As a member of the Detroit Area Modern Quilt Guild, Rebekah coordinates the monthly charity block sew-along. When she's not quilting, Rebekah works as a librarian, backpacks and travels with her husband, Jon, plays with her adorable cat and pug, and knits and cross stitches.